Debates in Media Studies A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

If the emphasis in Introduction to Media Studies 1A and 1B was on how media matters in our social world, in this module the stress is on different theoretical approaches to the study of media and the debates circulating around those approaches. Media can be analysed as ritual, (global) industry, meaning-maker, technology, dreamworld, everyday life, work place, or sensual pleasure machine. Focus can switch from media production and organisation, to analysis of media output, to exploration of consumption and use, to the bigger issue of media in society.

In carving a way through this complexity the module will introduce you to a few key frameworks – for example political economy, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, feminist media theory – and alert you to how differences of approach have emerged depending on the specific medium or cultural form (radio, TV, cinema, internet, newspaper, advertising, music, etc). However, a repeated reference point for the module is the cultural output of media and methods analysis, especially modes of textual analysis.

Europe 1900-45

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module focuses on the development of essential study skills such as textual analysis, note-taking, the planning and writing of essays and summaries. You will normally work with texts written in (one of) your foreign language(s).

Italian 1A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

You will consolidate and progress your knowledge of grammar. Improved grammatical accuracy, oral and written fluency, lexis, and listening and reading comprehension are achieved through the study of a variety of topics and integrated grammar. You will also gain insight into the culture and society of your chosen country.

Italian 1B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

You will acquire advanced knowledge of grammar and improve grammatical accuracy, oral and written fluency, lexis, and listening and reading comprehension through the study of a variety of topics and integrated grammar. There is an emphasis on the summarising and handling of authentic texts. You will also study the literature, culture, society and politics of Italy.

Italy 1900-45

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

This module develops and extends the ideas and themes introduced in the lecture series History and Culture in the 20th Century. Relevant works of literature, film, theatre and the press are studied in Italian, wherever possible. Written and oral material is drawn from a wide range of sources to make you aware of the context in which the country whose language you study has progressed towards its current situation. You will develop essential skills of note-taking, discussing, summarising, analysing and essay writing (including documentation).

Questioning the Media A

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module introduces the study of media forms, texts and systems and their contribution to social life. You will begin to explore the breadth of media studies through attention to the ways in which media matter. In what ways, and how significant are the media in the formation of individual identities and in the practices of everyday life? In the more public world, to what extent are media key to providing knowledge and enabling the debate necessary to the practices of democracy? The module enables you to build on your own experiences of media as a consumer and user. But it also encourages critical attention to how the field of media studies has historically been forged: through argument and contestation between different academic approaches and disciplines.

The module ranges across media and genres, engaging with both contemporary and historical material. Topics may include: audience pleasure and identity; representations and power; development of different broadcasting systems; the social impact of the rise of digital media.

Key terms may include: pleasure, identity, representation, semiotics, power, ideology, hegemony, discourse and subject, public service, public sphere, news values, networks, cultural and political citizenship.

Italian 2A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

Your knowledge of syntax will be revised and progressed and active knowledge of lexis increased. Speaking, listening, reading and written skills will be raised to a higher level through the study of authentic texts taken from a variety of media. The study of relevant current affairs will be an important element of the module.

Italian 2B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Your knowledge of syntax and lexis will continue to be enhanced alongside the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Practical aspects of living, studying and working abroad will be covered, including history, geography, politics, society, culture and literature.

Italy 1945-date

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Relevant works of literature, film, theatre and the press are studied in Italian, wherever possible. Written and oral material is drawn from a wide range of sources to make you aware of the context in which Italy has progressed towards its current situation. You will develop essential skills of note-taking, discussing, summarising, analysing and essay writing (including documentation). The module will allow you to progress towards independent study.

News, Politics and Power A

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module explores media and politics and, more broadly, the media and questions of power. It focuses on current affairs with a stress on news; although other forms of factual content (for instance TV docudrama, web blogs, broadsheet lifestyle spin-offs) are also covered. This module considers the role media can play in producing our understanding of the globalizing world in which we live. It asks how media frames, organises, and contextualises events, both as they take place, and in relation to the collective memories that emerge after the event. It also asks how the media themselves are managed, manipulated, and influenced – variously by governments, media owners, professional newsrooms codes, and/or by public pressure.

You will examine the role the media play in relation to the citizen and the state. It is through the optic of citizenship, particularly in relation to the public sphere, that questions concerning the power of the media are addressed. You will also explore how a wide range of media contribute to the maintenance or erosion of a democratic society and an informed citizenship.

Advertising and Social Change A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

In the context of the rise of consumer culture and the expansion and proliferation of media systems, this module addresses the historical development of advertising. A key theoretical framing is provided by debates about the shift from modernity/fordism to post-modernity/post-fordism, about 'knowledge' industries and the emergence of a 'risk' society.

Themes explored include advertising's relation to social change and its exploration and contribution to social identities. Engaging with contemporary practices, the module also balances attention to how the industry perceives itself with critical perspectives of its place in society. Through case studies and examples, the module offers ways of approaching ad texts and the consumption of advertising as well as ways to understand the changing industry of the 21st century. It offers opportunity to address advertising in the UK and elsewhere.

Europe 1945-date

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

The module provides you with an overview of important historical and cultural developments in the second part of the 20th century, focussing on the period from the 1940s through to the present day. Movements and trends in the political, historical and social area and their impact on the arts and literature are addressed in the lectures. For all these topics, various national settings (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) are examined and discussed. The lecture series seeks to establish a comparative perspective on the relevant issues.

Language and Nation

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

Following a short introduction, the module falls into two parts. The first looks at how we discover the links between Language, Thought and Nation, and try to identify and analyse covert as well as overt associations between these. Who are the guardians and gatekeepers of our 'native' languages, and what are the pressures to have English in England, French in France but Castillian in Spain and Post-Florentine in Italy? Are some languages more equal than others, conferring more status to their users? And why do languages still change despite 'Academies'? The second part looks at instances of how expressions of the relationship between a nation and its language emerge as various literary and other genres (with particular reference to the novel), and how these feed back into the collective identity (with particular reference to representations in the cinema of various countries).

Sound, Culture & Society

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

TV: Fictions and Entertainments A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module focuses on the textual and contextual study of television's key fiction and entertainment genres – soap operas, sitcoms and other styles of comedy, game shows, lifestyle television, daytime television, and music television, among others. You will explore the defining generic characteristics of those televisual categories, their representational strategies, their ideological implications, their particular pleasures and their relationship with audiences. The primary focus will be on British television, although comparative material from other broadcasting contexts will be used where appropriate for comparative purposes. Most of the primary material will be drawn from current or recent television, but you will also investigate the history of popular television genres in order to understand their evolution.

Europe Mandatory Year Abroad - Modern Languages

120 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Italian 3A

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

The two hours per week classroom contact throughout this 25-week module are devoted, on the one hand, to oral and interpreting work and, on the other, to translation and composition. There is therefore an emphasis upon oral proficiency, both in everyday conversation and in more formal contexts, such as presentations and mediation between speakers of Italian and English. There is a similar emphasis upon written proficiency, whether writing Italian 'freely' within the framework of a discursive essay, translating from English into Italian or, indeed, from Italian into English. Roughly equal contact time is devoted to these three written skills and the same weighting is accorded to each of them in assessments.

Italian 3B

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

Italian Special Subject

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module, delivered in Italian to all single-honours and joint-major students studying Italian as part of their degree, will look at women's presence and representation in early modern Italian literature and art. This module will address some distinctive works by Boccaccio, Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna, and will cover a variety of genres such as prose, poetry, philosophical commentary, letter writing and biography.

Class and Popular Culture

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

While constructions of gender, sexuality, 'race' and ethnicity in popular media and culture have been subjected to increasing academic scrutiny in the last decade or so, class has been largely left off the agenda. This module attempts to redress this neglect. It centres on theorisations of class in the cultural sphere, and on a series of debates over the representation of class in a range of examples from popular culture.

You will consider both strategies of 'othering' groups such as the working class and underclass, and also representations of the 'invisible', taken for granted norm of middle-class identity. Topics covered may include: emotions and class - shame, hate, and envy; news, television reality shows and television drama; and embodiment, education, aspiration and respectability.

Comedy and Cultural Belonging

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

Comedy is, above all, a cultural form that invites its audiences to feel that they belong – to a social community, a class, a locality, a nation, a subculture, a gender, a sexual identity, an ethnic group, a community of interest, or a complex intersection of several of these. This module explores the relationship between comedy and belonging by considering a number of conceptual fields, such as: theories of the comedic; questions of identity formation; notions of representation and stereotyping; structures of power and resistance; the sexual politics of jokes; concepts of carnival and excess; the idea of a 'national sense of humour'; the use of comic strategies by 'minority' groups; the complexities of camp; and the role of class in cultural consumption. The initial focus would be on 20th-century British popular comedy, and the comic texts and practitioners studied might include Alan Bennett, Mike Leigh, Victoria Wood, the music hall tradition, the Ealing comedies, the Carry On films, Morecambe and Wise, The League of Gentlemen and The Royle Family.

Consuming Passions

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This module explores consumption practices within specific cultural and historical contexts. It introduces you to processes through which objects are made sense of and appropriated by people in their everyday life. At the same time, the module explores consumption as a basic human activity through which people engage and understand their position in the world. It will locate historical and culture-specific consumption practices within wider processes of identity creation and social differentiation. Finally, consumption will be discussed in the context of the development of consumer cultures and globalisation.

Documentary, Reality TV and 'Real Lives'

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

During this documentary module you'll analyse documentary production in its historical and cultural context and focuses on new developments in documentary production, reality TV formats, feature documentary and alternative documentary production. In addition we'll address emerging documentary production in the developing world.

The module covers foundational thinking in documentary; theorisations of different modes of documentary; reality TV; debates over documentary's truth claims; the boundary between documentary and fiction; dramatisation and reconstructions; and international independent documentary production.

Genres in European Literature

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This weekly lecture plus fortnightly seminar module, delivered in English to all Single Honours linguists (one or two languages) will consider key genres or styles in 20th-century European prose literature. These will vary from year to year, but will typically include some of the following: the novel and narrative theory, the short story, women's writing, biography, autobiography, fantasy, juvenilia and writing about youth. Equally, the authors and works selected for study (in English translation) will vary, but will normally include at least one prominent writer in each of the four European languages offered at this level, namely French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Globalisation and Communication

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module studies the role of the media (broadly understood to include all forms of telecommunications, the internet and computers, print and televisual journalism, and all forms of visual media) in the era of globalisation. You will investigate what the notion of globalisation actually refers to in various registers of discourse and theory, focusing on the relation between globalisation in the political-economic sense and globalisation in the cultural sense. The module then addresses the specific role of the various media in initiating, consolidating and sustaining both the idea and the practice of globalisation. It concludes by considering the merits and demerits of the process of globalisation in the arena of culture.

Hollywood Industry and Imaginary

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

Media, Publics and Protest

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

Social media have been at the heart of recent forms of protest both at home and abroad. This module aims to enable you to develop a critical understanding of the relationship between media, publics and protest. It will provide you with a conceptual framework and historical contextualisation with which to approach a key question in media studies - the construction of publics and counterpublics, and the relationship of media to democracy and democratic practice. The module begins by introducing a set of theoretical approaches to thinking about the public sphere; in the latter part of the course, you will be enabled collectively and independently to identify and research particular case studies, whether that be the role media play in revolution or political transition, in protests, demonstrations, petitions or riots, in hacktivism or culture jamming, or in cultural forms like satire and alternative media.

Modern Languages Dissertation

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 4

This module is available as an option both to single-honours and joint-major modern linguists. It provides the opportunity to conduct a self-assigned piece of research and to write it up in the target language, as an alternative to working in English in "Genres" (R9033). Each student will be allocated a supervisor in the relevant language, with whom s/he will agree the topic of her/his research and the title of the dissertation. However, that research will be essentially self-directed under the light-touch guidance of the supervisor, provided initially through shared workshops and, later on, through one-to-one tutorials. The student will be required to produce two excerpts of work in progress, at mutually agreed points in TB1, so that the supervisor can check that s/he is on the right lines and offer helpful formative feedback. For illustrative purposes, research topics might include: modern French authors, especially Sartre and the existentialists; post-war German literature; cinema adaptations of European literary works; Golden Age Spanish drama.

Music, Media and Culture

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

This module explores the relationship between music and media of all kinds, and questions the ideological structures underpinning the consumption of music in western society. The module focuses on the relationship between musical production and media technologies (the microphone, phonograph, radio and film), the changing role and place of music in society - understood through an analysis of media technologies, the meaning and nature of music and media reception in society, and the political economy of the music industry.

Social Media and Critical Practice

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 4

Social media has become the way of framing much internet and mobile media and the implications of this turn are important. We use social media platforms in our everyday life and they have become influential in journalism, promotional culture, education and across the media industries. However, their pervasiveness and significance goes unchallenged and largely celebrated through the language of participation, communication and freedom. This module aims to stand back from the everyday ubiquity of these forms to question and analyse them by using them critically and creatively.

The module examines a range of social media platforms by engaging and using them and by equipping students to critically analyse this. We look at the promise and perils of these new forms, the histories of their emergence, their institutional and structural shape and power, and the politics, economics, aesthetics and pleasures attached to them.

Students will engage social media platforms to create a small practical project and interrogate this engagement through an extended critique of use and practice.